The demand for certain methodologies of showcasing a sports product has changed how we consume such events. Fandom is the core of it, but it’s far less than what we’ve grown to see and expect.

The fascinating part is how this consumption has raised expectations. Wider access means more strenuous processes for those who transmit the sports product.

This is where streaming has found itself in a major pinch. It’s perennially behind its coaxial broadcasting brethren when it comes to latency, and it’s far from experiencing the event in real time.

In short, it has not reached the required heights that many consumers expect, fans or otherwise. It’s also not enough to support ambitions regarding the number of viewers at a given point.

Quick fixes are not an option, and true satisfaction is far from being in the books for now. It’s ironic considering there’s no lack of budget, investments, and willingness from those that control streaming services and compete on the global stage.

The reason behind this is also the subject of this article: a fundamental issue with the underpinnings of the internet. Its ‘old bones’ have been reinvigorated constantly, but the current iteration is having trouble with frontiers regarding data transmission.

We will address why low-latency streams are truly so important, why the internet is having these issues, and why there are certain solutions on the horizon!|

Why low latency has become so important

You should know a few core things about the meaning of this delay before we get a bit more technical:

• Streaming latency is, in simple terms, the delay between what happens in real time and what you see on your screen. If there is a goal or a touchdown, you will see it on your stream with a significant delay, even up to a minute.
• When compared to other transmission methods, such as video calls or cable television broadcasts, streaming is the slowest, which means that it has the biggest delay.

Since packaged streaming services have such a high impact and are the next frontier of media distribution, it’s normal to see them raise their standards.

This would appear to be the case, but why have things moved on so intensely in the last few years, especially regarding sports?

Transmission directness

The first explanation is the fact that consumers want to be able to hop onto a match stream right away within their own platform.

They’re already paying hefty amounts for these subscriptions, especially amid a boom in the number of companies offering proprietary services that provide their exclusive catalogues.

Per Statista’s video streaming expense chart, we are at the gates of having $100 per month in total cost when subscribing to the top 6 services. It’s becoming increasingly hard to have a holistic package as a consumer.

This means that the quality of sports streaming, including its quickness and directness, has become mandatory for satisfied customers. But not only them.

The sports betting influence

Sports betting is akin to an elephant in the room. The global sports betting market has ballooned immensely.

As the Polaris Market Research study on the sports betting market size tells us, the sum 2024 figures were already nearing $100 billion, and that number is only going to rise if we are to trust these specialty forecasts.

Sports betting has become the dictator of terms when it comes to how the on-field product itself presents and markets. This is the case for one simple reason: the financial flow that it provides.

In short, betting companies have a lot of traffic and record major revenue because of how willing people are to wager. This, in turn, gives them the firepower to come up with major partnership deals that put their product at the forefront.

Delay equals loss

The sports betting market is extremely competitive, even in spaces where the market share distribution is among a limited number of operators. They are the ones throwing money at leagues and clubs, boosting revenue and turning this medium increasingly visible.

Their actual product model is still evolving, but live wagering and microbetting are becoming increasingly important. BetOnValue observes that many of the operators in its database are already leveraging such markets very intensely.

They depend very heavily on lightning-quick decision-making based on what the bettor sees in real time.

If that bettor sees changing lines because they’re using a delayed stream, they will abort their wager, which is an instant loss for the sportsbook.

Delay means fewer opportunities to wager, and that’s money lost for any bookmaker that bankrolls.

Integration as a result

One of the most interesting ambitions that aims to become a certain scenario is the integration of betting within streaming.

It has a long way to go, and it certainly requires a lot of regulatory work that would make it worthwhile. As for the technical feasibility behind it, artificial intelligence that acts as a liaison between APIs and actual streaming can make the integration almost seamless.

However, for any betting service to be in step with the actual streaming, the viewer must not have latency issues. It would defeat the whole point.

A basic explanation of infrastructure and why it can barely keep up

Now that we’ve properly set the stage in terms of why there’s a rising importance in less latency, it’s time to talk about some details of why this is so hard at the current time.

For the sake of clarity and brevity, we will use a mix of technical breakdowns and simplification without sounding reductionist.

There are some concepts and terms that may sound alien, but they have a fundamental importance in why the current iteration of the internet infrastructure cannot support the information flow needed to provide proper streaming with small latency:

• The internet currently uses TCPs (Transmission Control Protocols) that have a methodology of ensuring the right information arrives at the right time.
• When information goes from point A (where the sports event happens) to point B (your device), it travels as data sent in packets. They are tiny chunks of videographic information that, on their travels, may arrive out of order or lose their way. This requires resending, which means yet another delay.
• There can be congestion when these protocols detect out-of-order packet movement. As data travels through numerous routers that lead it to your screen, the irregular traveling pathway leads to disorderly arrivals. The TCPs have to order these packets, which causes delay and congests the pathway.
• The packets that wait do so in so-called buffers. Their waiting process is the buffering that you’ve probably seen. This buffering may lead to an overflow within the capacity of a buffer. This can cause a loss of data packets, which the transmitter must resend, leading to further congestion.
• The TCP is more reliability-based rather than focusing on speed. Its protocol-heavy methodology is about arranging and resending data packets based on built-in acknowledgements. It’s a key cog in this digital machine because it organizes information, but it also depends on key, built-in confirmations.
• Other factors, such as adaptive bitrate (the quality of your stream), cause delay due to changes in the size of data packets. Physical distance also causes small delays, but these are normal in any medium.

To conclude, the transmission format is full of micro-procedures of transporting and organizing data in a way that makes it correct. It guarantees the orderly flow of the video information, but causes a delay because of how that information is transmitted.

New solutions are on the horizon, but their applicability is up in the air

Since there is a lot of pressure and willingness to convert streaming into a true, low-latency style of consuming sports.

Per a Stats Perform report on the streaming latency for Super Bowl LX, several streaming platforms lagged up to a minute, going as far as 62 seconds from the actual reality. Imagine just how many bets must’ve been ineligible because of that.

In this section, we will talk about QUIC, which is the acronym for Quick UDP Internet Connections. It’s a transport protocol that uses modern tech, but also employs other methods.

Rather than relying on the aforementioned TCP, this protocol uses UDP, which is a User Datagram Protocol.

It’s very important to note that the UDP is connectionless, but that it also does not wait for confirmation to send data packets. The information flows continuously.

Developed by Google, QUIC does not require the back-and-forth between transmitter and receiver, which also has TCP confirmations and TLS encryption. Instead, it has both transport and encryption protocols already built in, which eliminates the need for confirmation.

It also adds more avenues for transmission, which means that the same congestion because of stopped packet movement is not an issue anymore. It opens up the flow of information.

There are current applications for it, especially thanks to its integration into the Chrome and Firefox browsers, but mass adoption is still quite a way to go.

Conclusion

To conclude this piece, most of the information movement protocols on the internet are about reliability and confirmation methods, not about speed. Rather than focusing on direct quickness, it wants to ensure the correct traveling pathway of data.

Betting has truly changed the landscape of investments into sports, which is why a product that supports wagering has become in demand. If you’re the betting type yourself and are hoping to see better and faster streaming, remember to also gamble responsibly!